Sohr's Powered Health wraps key Growthwright services around startups

Milt Capps

Published January 15, 2016

Jim Sohr

POWERED HEALTH, the Nashville-based venture-support company that is majority-owned by Chairman/CEO Jim Sohr, aims to market its Growthwright-branded IT, software and strategic services to more healthcare information technology startup clients.

Mike Cerino is president of the Growthwright line of business, in addition to serving as Powered Health's CFO. Prior to chartering Growthwright in 2015, such services were directed mainly toward support of companies in which Sohr personally held control investments.

In 2009, Sohr, now 54, was among founder-owners who sold AIM Healthcare Services to UnitedHealth Group's Ingenix technology subsidiary. The AIM transaction brought sellers $430MM in cash, according to media reports at the time.

Yesterday, Sohr told Venture Nashville that his personal experience across AIM's history, plus his experience investing via his Five Star Venture Funding LLC, led him to realize that a venture services company could significantly help executives mired in distractions within other healthcare startups.

Mike Cerino

Growthwright's goal, said Sohr, is helping to free client-teams to focus on growth and development priorities, while Growthwright wraps a set of strategic business advice, shared organizational infrastructure and outsourced services around each startup client. Sohr is Growthwright's chairman.

Neither Sohr nor Cerino ruled-out providing services to non-healthcare tech startups.

In addition to accounting, payroll, business compliance, sales, marketing, human resources and other functions, Growthwright strategic services include business planning, pricing, forecasting, financing and funding support, board of director and investor support and capitalization table management, among other offerings.

Cerino told VNC that Powered Health's primary advisors include Nashville attorney Derek Hughey; accountants with Mullins Clemmons & Mayes; and, the company banks with Truxton Trust.

Sohr and his wife Leah Eskind Sohr also personally fund Sohr Grants of $25,000 each, with no equity takes or other strings, for candidates with entrepreneurial plans they plan to pursue upon completing their MBAs at Sohr's alma mater, the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Sohr also earned his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt in electrical engineering (1986).

VNC previously wrote about three of the eight Sohr Grant recipients chosen thus far in the grant-program's life: Emerge Wellness (Consumer Finance), Georgie Beauty (Fashion) and Vrion Ticketing (Travel).

Sohr's minority investments have reportedly included InVivoLink, which optimizes care delivery associated with certain orthopedic procedures.

Sohr's earlier career included experience as AVP-Operations at Marine Midland Bank. He was also director of marketing and new business development at Hobart/Tafa Technologies in Concord, N.H., according to a Bloomberg report.

Cerino's earlier career spanned several sectors, including executive roles with Ambulatory Services of America, Fresenius Medical Care and Ernst & Young, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Among other members of his extended family, Jim Sohr's brother Scott is also a businessman and entrepreneur, with investments including DataFi.

The name Powered Health is a dba for Sohr-controlled Five Star Solutions LLC, which was officially chartered in Tennessee in 2014.

Sohr's earlier Franklin-based AIM Healthcare is now known in most quarters as Payment Resolution Services LLC, according to information online. VNC

last edited Jan. 16, 2016 9:27am